


Come quiet, come willing

by sevenofspade



Category: American Gods (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-18
Updated: 2018-03-18
Packaged: 2019-04-04 09:54:16
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,172
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14017698
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sevenofspade/pseuds/sevenofspade
Summary: Laura and her companions go down the wrong path.





	Come quiet, come willing

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Miss_M](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Miss_M/gifts).



> I hope you enjoy this.
> 
> Title from the Ghost Bees' [Erl king](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mN3qhn8NSZY).

Salim drove while Laura slept.  
Laura dreamt of a wild cavalry, horses black, horses rotting, horses skeletal, and the riders no better. A figure in white leading them like lightning leading the tempest. The storm growing in the wake of the hunt, clouds gathering and darkening with every hoof that struck the empty air in this mad gallop.   
Laura awoke with the sounds of bells ringing in her ears. She kicked at the dashboard. Salim pushed her feet away and changed the station her. The sound of bells receded.  
Salim kept driving.  
Laura dozed in and out of sleep, as did Sweeney. Laura took vicious pleasure in waking up Sweeney any time that she could. This time she waited until he was truly and deeply asleep, fives miles into the forest he hadn't even seen over the horizon. She hadn't known there were alder forests in this part of the country.

Laura pulled aside the window into the back half of the cab. She gave Salim a reassuring smile in reply to his worried glance. Thunder rumbled in the distance. The sky was heavy as if waiting for the alarum to rain. The clouds were dark and roiling over the horizons. The thunder in the distance sounds like bells.

Laura took a stick she'd grabbed on their last stop and shoved it up Sweeney's nose. 

Sweeney jerked awake, banging his head against the roof. "Fuck you, dead wife!"

Laura snickered.

"Turn around! Fucking turn around!" Sweeney banged the glass partition. He had gotten paler than she was.

Lightning flashed. The thunder resolved into hooves on pavement.

"Drive faster!" Sweeney was shouting.

Laura rolled her eyes. Trust Sweeney to never make up his mind.

"Which is it?" Salim asked. "I cannot do both."

Sweeney sighed. "Just fucking drive, okay? Just drive."

"Why are you scared? It is only thunder," Salim said, but he began driving faster anyway.

"It's a fucking grimweld," Sweeney all but snarled.

Laura had no idea what a grimweld was and she didn't really care. There wasn't much that could scare the dead. She looked out the window and the stars visible through the trees. There were an awful lot of them. 

Then again, there wasn't much that could scare Sweeney, either. Maybe thunder from a clear sky would do it.

Something landed on the roof of the cab. The roof bent in. The outline of hooves dented the metal.

"What the fuck?" It was Laura's turn to shout.

Salim drove faster. The cab shuddered as the weight on it lifted.

"It's the Hunt," Sweeney said. "We brought evil onto a grimweld, so the Hunt is after us."

* * *

_Coming to America_

The hunt had caught a scent. 

They could feel it in their bones, in the rising bloodlust on the air. They snarled. A spear hit the ground. The chase was on.

The hunt tracked the prey through the forest and beyond, as far west as west went.

The horses stomped restlessly. Their prey had taken a boat. It was not the kind of boat that returned with the same cargo and crew it had left with. The hunt did not go out to sea, it was simply not what it did. The hunt never dropped a quarry, either.

The hunt did not go out to sea; there were other powers at work there. Perhaps one could be persuaded to make a deal.

One even had a boat. The hunt did not need a boat and had asked for permission merely out of a semblance of manners, but it was kindness that drove l'Ankou to offer the use of the boat. 

The offer was accepted and the Hunt sailed out to sea.

They passed the isles out at sea and the farthest lighthouse, standing alone like a stone sentinel. They sailed the furthest shores of the Isle of Apples; there lied a king -- the hunt has been his, once. In many ways it still was.

There were storms at sea as well, wilder and stranger than those overland. The horses ran like lightning through all tempests.

They did not catch up with their quarry's boat; if the hunt was to kill, it would kill on land, beneath moon and trees.

They made landfall in the winter. Their prey was dead before daybreak.

* * *

A horse landed in front of the cab. Salim slammed on the brakes. The cab ploughed right into the horse, rider and all, which dissolved into a cloud of smoke.

Sweeney laughed, unhinged.

There was a flash of lightning and a crack of thunder. The sky had filled with an angry darkness, a furious army of clouds. No, more than that, there was an army in the clouds, horse riders, one and all. The horses were black, except those that were skeletons.

Laura stepped out of the cab. She stared at the cavalry behind, a barely restrained mass of rotting flesh and bones. In a flash of lightning, at their helm appeared a figure in white, a woman, maybe, or a man with long hair. At their horse's feet was crossroad that had not been there before.

She had dreamt of this.

Laura took a step towards the tempest and the hunt.

Sweeney rushed out of the car to hold her back. It was nice to know he cared, even if he was still an asshole.

"This is Hellequin," Sweeney was saying, trying to pull Laura towards the cab.

Laura's grand-mother had told her tales of crossroads deals with demons. Hellkin could not be much different to demons, could it?

"What the fuck do you want?" Laura had to shout to be heard over the howling winds of the tempest.

The figure in white held out a spear towards her. 

"You can't have her," Sweeney said. Laura could barely hear him herself, but the figure in white seemed to have no issue, tilting their head towards him. There are flashes of shadowy colours in the folds of the white cloth.

"I agree," Salim said.

"I don't," Laura said. The hunt's riders were rotting or bone alone, but dead as they looked, they were animate. Sweeney had told her what would happen when she finished rotting: the flesh would fall of her bones and she would be inanimate once more.

There were more things in the world than gods and mortals. Sweeney was proof enough of that. There were all the in-betweens, who had neither mortality nor divinity, only a twilight eternity. The hunt was one of them. Some had once been gods, but many had never been; most importantly for Laura, some had once been mortals.

"I'll join your hunt," Laura said. 

The figure snarled. The horses of the hunt and their riders became agitated.

Power. She had to offer power. "Odin," she said, unsure where the word came from. "I will find him and return him to you."

The figure smiled and drew the spear back. The storm broke. Rain fell in torrents. Laura felt it enter beneath her skin, washing away the dregs of her mortality.


End file.
